The Seventh Child (38 page)

I went upstairs, sat in Magdalene’s wheelchair, and stared at Hven. Still I didn’t cry. Out there was the great Stjerneborg Observatory where Tycho Brahe had made his greatest mistake: “Never will I accept that the sun is the center of the universe,”
he’d
shouted. “It is an infamous lie. The earth does not move.”

The magnitude of this particular mistake had always appealed to me.

Of course the mirror caught me in this unguarded state of mind and saw its chance to ask its cruelest question to date:
“My dear little Marie, who is your mother
now
?”

You are
, I should have replied mockingly. But I kept quiet. Rococo mirrors of this very old kind—from the enormous villas on Strandvejen—do not understand that kind of irony. And during those hours, I had more important things on my mind.

In the days that followed, the criminal investigators from the homicide department pursued the mystery of Magna’s brutal death unsuccessfully. They couldn’t find motive, or pattern, or a way through the labyrinth, and if she really had been pushed—and if it had anything to do with the anonymous letter as the press conjectured—then there were many possibilities, so many in fact that they only caused more confusion and even more far-fetched theories. Each new theory led to a dead end, and each new dead end increased the frustration.

Then a young policeman suddenly remembered the Oceka grocer mentioning the package Magna sent to Australia. But it had long since left the country, and the sorrowful grocer could not for the life of him remember the name Martha Magnolia Louise Ladegaard had written on the envelope. The package had only been on his counter for a moment.
He’d
stamped it for more than 200 Danish kroner—that’s how far it was going—and Magna had thanked him. Once again the grocer babbled like a child, and the police gave up.

After about a week, the investigation was at a standstill—that much was clear from the papers—and the criminal detectives rolled their eyes when no one was looking.

I understood from the cop who came to Kongslund a few days later and talked to me for a long time about Magna that her death had further startled the prime minister, the minister of national affairs, and their security advisor, Carl Malle. The Danish Security and Intelligence Service had offered its assistance, but the police had declined.

If Magna had any knowledge that might lead to a confrontation in the apartment in Skodsborg, others might be in danger, he said.

Was he referring to me?

Could she have had any dangerous knowledge?

I didn’t answer.

If her visitor had gone through all her drawers, what might he have been looking for?

Nobody had an answer. But I noticed that the police had automatically placed both the minister and the security advisor in the category of
nonsuspects
. They had also accepted the shared alibi of everyone at the orphanage: the postcelebration cleanup.

A couple days later, they wanted the names of all the children
who’d
come to Kongslund between 1961 and 1962, and any who might be connected to the mysterious John Bjergstrand. I gave them only one name: my own.

After that, they seized all of Kongslund’s records. They had no way of knowing what I knew: that all evidence of Magna’s deeds had been carefully removed from the binders. I thought of Magna again. But no tears came.

Insofar as there were answers to the mysteries of Kongslund, I knew where they were, but it wasn’t a knowledge I cared to share then. Everything was recorded in the book that Magna, for as long as I could remember, had kept in her rosewood writing bureau—a book that had always fascinated me but which I had only seen fleetingly a few times. The Kongslund Protocol.

Her precious, secret diary.

I didn’t know if Almind-Enevold and Malle knew of the Protocol. The police had gone through all of Magna’s belongings, but they hadn’t confiscated anything of significance. The Protocol was gone, and it didn’t surprise me. After hearing the grocer’s description of Magna’s last act, I had a pretty good idea where it was.

But it was a secret that I wouldn’t share with anyone in the world, not for anything. Since Magna’s death, the Protocol belonged to me, and I knew I’d get it back.

At that point, Susanne lost her patience with the investigation and demanded that they release Magna’s remains—it had been nearly three weeks—so the old matron could have a dignified burial at Søllerød Church. The police relented. Magna could have been pushed, but she also could have fallen. The case would be dismissed as an accident.

If anyone cared to remember—and at least one person who had become interested in Kongslund could remember—this was exactly what had happened to the woman whose body had been found on the beach between Kongslund and Bellevue seven years earlier. Like Magna, she had died under mysterious circumstances; her case had also reluctantly been classified as an accident. The retired chief homicide inspector who had probed the death and later shared his suspicions with a reporter who had never publicized the story, was now sitting in a summerhouse in Rågeleje reading the newspaper article about the dead matron over and over again.

Finally, he put the newspaper down and stared out the window for a long time.

The dead woman on the beach had carried a picture of Kongslund on her person. And now the former matron of the orphanage had died in equally mystifying circumstances. He couldn’t see the connection despite his many years of experience. But he felt the same deep sense of unease.

He sat with his hand on the telephone, weighing his options. His sense of duty told him that someone had to point out these incomprehensible coincidences, yet he feared getting Carl Malle on the line again. Years of experience with police politics told him he wouldn’t get further than that, and a former colleague had once warned him not to take any chances: Malle heard everything.

His wife cast a worried look his way. She could always tell when he was tempted to leap into uncertain and hazardous situations.

The distress in her eyes settled the matter for him. He set the telephone receiver back down.

20

THE FUNERAL

June 5, 2008

Perhaps what Magdalene wrote me from the Other Side the evening before we sent my foster mother on her last journey into the Darkness is true:
Remember, Marie, adults are just children who have learned to hide their true selves behind beautiful dress and innocent faces; in truth, people react more and more childishly as they age and therefore become ever more dangerous and unpredictable.

Since Magna’s death, Magdalene has only addressed me in writing.

I stared at the words and was awake most of the night with an ominous sense that she wasn’t just making a general philosophical observation but had a very particular person in mind.

This was a few hours before the journalist Knud Taasing visited me and opened the doors to everything that had been hidden for so long.

Søllerød Church had aged gracefully. Sitting high above Søllerød Inn, it had white walls, a tower, and choir gable made of large red bricks. The first stones had been laid in the late twelfth century. In the cemetery, which sloped down toward the lake, my foster mother’s chosen final resting place commanded a view that no doubt appealed to her lifelong desire to find the best places for herself and those closest to her—not the least of whom were all the children
she’d
sent into the world.

I glanced at the church ceiling and almost expected to meet Magna’s gaze or hear her voice; there was no doubt in my mind that
she’d
be present at her own departure. Somewhere above us
she’d
be floating and watching the ceremony, I was sure, and
she’d
see that I still hadn’t cried.

The last time I’d been to church was when I was a little girl and Magdalene, without her wheelchair, had been conveyed to the Other Side. I’d sat on Magna’s lap, crying for the loss of my only friend,
who’d
been so old I’d come to believe she couldn’t die. Now Magna herself lay in repose down there in the darkness under a spray of flowers. Beside me sat Gerda Jensen with her eyes narrowed, as though she were counting down to zero in her head. Despite her tiny stature, Gerda loomed large. She was the third most important woman in my life, and the only one still alive.

The scent of freesia pervaded the church, and the congregation sniffled and sneezed in response. It filled me with a childish satisfaction that eternity couldn’t meet Magna in dignified silence as was undoubtedly the preference of today’s guest of honor, Ole Almind-Enevold. Behind me sat ministers and officials and members of the Resistance; retired doctors, nurses, midwives, and wet nurses; and, at the very back, a small delegation of older ladies from the great years of Mother’s Aid Society. The coffin was decorated with white and yellow bouquets, and the God-fearing majority sat with their heads bowed as though in earnest prayer for the dearly departed soul. But I knew this wasn’t the case; most of them were thinking thoughts that couldn’t be uttered in a church. It wasn’t about the dead woman in the coffin, but about their own fragile creep across the field of life. They circled around the fear that Our Lord Jesus Christ had not risen and wouldn’t be able to gather them up as they journeyed through the profusion of flowers into Uncertainty. That the Lord might forget the appointment and his promise of eternal life, because He was busy with other matters. Or the unmentionable possibility: that He didn’t exist at all, that the body’s atoms would fly right up into the stratosphere and become part of a dark and endless universe.

I don’t doubt that Magna was excited to meet the Eternal Darkness; her work had equipped her with a ceaselessly curious disposition. She wanted to know all the secrets of life, including the last one. Nevertheless, I know she would have preferred to have remained on Earth for a few more years to fulfill her role in the project that Fate had placed on her path: the Great Repair—that magnanimous task of repairing the defects that the adults of the world in their thoughtlessness had inflicted on God’s smallest and most precious creatures. This work has been going on since the days of the Cro-Magnon, of course, and we haven’t made much progress. Perhaps we’ve succeeded in locating (and removing) one one-hundredth of human egotism with each generation (a generous estimate), and perhaps we have increased the capacity for compassion by one iota per century (again, a high estimate), and yet this was exactly the kind of hope that Magna carried with her.

Susanne Ingemann is sitting on the bench behind me, next to Carl Malle and the long-since retired director of Mother’s Aid Society, Mrs. Krantz. Behind her is Orla Berntsen with Peter Trøst and Søren Severin Nielsen, who are flanked by two elderly couples—their parents—who are sniffling because of the flowers. I recognize them from my childhood trips to Rungsted and Søborg.

The Almighty One is standing by the coffin, distinguished from the impressive profusion of flowers like a small pink tulip with an absurd, genetically modified mop of silvery white hair. He nods because he is—once again—ready to give a speech for my foster mother, the greatest repair woman the nation has ever known. He’s wearing a dark suit and stands with folded hands, resembling the undertaker from Strandvejen, who even in this holy moment is sitting triumphantly on a pew in the back of the church in the shadows.

“Magna was a cofounder of Children’s Right to Life,” Ole Almind-Enevold says, but I am not sure my foster mother approves. Even though she understood the unintended (or at least unconsidered) side effects of abortion—that the living children laughing and singing in front of one’s own eyes would never have existed—she also understood the unbearable weight endured by the young women
she’d
met in such large numbers in her repair shop. And even from the Other Side, she could see her unintended role in securing an anti-abortion voting block for the ambitious politician now presiding over her lifeless body.

The minister folded his hands in front of him and raised his voice toward the ceiling. “Magna once told me a story that I never told anyone else, maybe because I wasn’t sure how to interpret it
…
” He paused dramatically, and even the scattered sneezing ceased. “She told me of a child who learned that her father, who suffered from tuberculosis, was going to die. The unhappy child prayed to God in Heaven to let her father live, and the father, who heard the despairing entreaties, finally gave his child a promise that went beyond Death:
When I’m gone
, he said,
just wait patiently. I’ll come back. And then you’ll know I’m still with you, that God exists and watches over you, and that one day we will live together for all eternity.
The sick man died and they buried him, and the child began waiting
…
” The minister paused again, and I thought I saw the hint of a smile on his lips. Behind me, someone sneezed quietly. “Magna stopped her story right there and said nothing until I lost patience and asked, ‘But, Magna, when did the child’s father return?’ She replied, ‘Ole, that’s the point: he
never
returned.’ ‘But that can’t be right,’ I said, ‘because if it is, the story is meaningless.’ ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The child waited and waited, year after year; the child grew up and became an adult, but nothing ever happened, and she never stopped waiting, and finally Death came instead, and the father never returned as
he’d
promised.’ ”

Now there was no doubt. Almind-Enevold was smiling. I felt the faint unease in the church, as though a little demon were throwing sparks from the ceiling onto people’s bare skin.

“It was
her
father,” he said. His eyes fell to the coffin. “It was Magna’s father.”

The congregation became absolutely silent at this revelation.

“As many of you might know,” Ole continued, “her father was a minister in Gauerslund, and in Magna’s eyes he hadn’t broken his promise—and never would—because if eternity exists, you have to possess infinite patience. In her eyes that kind of promise has no limitation—and no end. The father had done the only right thing.
He’d
both comforted his daughter and proven his case, she said. And she lived according to that principle the rest of her days.”

He paused for a moment and then said, “Infinite patience.”

I didn’t remember the story because my foster mother had never told it to me, and that didn’t surprise me because she would have anticipated my rage. I understood better than anyone what Magna had learned from this tragic experience: it was the will to do good that mattered. When that will was properly demonstrated, the good would prove itself in the end. She wasn’t one to be distracted by the disappointments this kind of philosophy would trigger along the way, because she never hesitated at the forge in her repair shop. When she was in the process of repairing, sparks flew about her, hitting high and low. In the end, it was this act of sheer will that both defined her and meant the most to her, and I think that’s why I didn’t cry.

The Almighty One bows his head. The speech is over. This time he has mentioned neither Magdalene nor me, nor quoted from Magdalene’s diaries, which I hadn’t even known he was aware of.

The church slowly empties.

The white coffin with the golden handles is carried by Carl Malle, Ole Almind-Enevold, Susanne Ingemann, Orla Berntsen, Søren Severin Nielsen, and Peter Trøst. A truly bizarre ensemble. I had refused to participate. I didn’t want anyone to see the old matron’s foster daughter with her crooked back and inwardly pointing toes collapse under the weight of her dead foster mother’s body.

They march outside in small, much too small, steps. Awaiting them are representatives from every type of media: magazines, tabloids, morning papers, TV stations; there are reporters with microphones that stick straight up in the air and tall, gray men with TV cameras on their shoulders.

Knud Taasing stands next to Nils Jensen, who for some reason is making no move to photograph the procession. In the days leading up to the funeral, there had been some speculation in the press: Is the death of Martha Magnolia Louise Ladegaard in any way connected to the case of the anonymous letters?
Who’d
visited her on the night she died?
Who’d
received the mysterious package
she’d
sent a few hours before her death?

Reportedly, the police had made three unsuccessful calls to the Australian authorities, and they had also consulted Danish clubs and associations in Sidney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth—without any results. Apparently, nothing connected the old matron or the orphanage to anyone or anything the Australian police could identify. After three weeks of breathless coverage over whether the death was connected to the Kongslund Affair, it all came to nothing. And I detected a satisfied glint in Ole Almind-Enevold’s eyes as he stood beside her grave. In addition, the case of the little Tamil boy had completely disappeared from the front pages after Søren Severin Nielsen had blocked his deportation with a sea of petitions for a humanitarian stay and complaints about violations of laws that protected children. The media didn’t have the patience for that.

We stood on the slope facing Søllerød Inn, singing “Beauty Around Us, Glory Above Us”—the way it ought to be sung, without the sentimentality that creeps into the echo of a church space. They lowered Magna into the ground. The reporters stood in uncomfortable silence next to the church’s southern wall near a sandstone carving of the Virgin Mary and the Jesus child.

The prominent guests drove to Kongslund, where there were even more flower arrangements. The smell throughout the great villa couldn’t have been any stronger than if Magna were still alive, filling the vases with her generous hands. Most of the guests walked onto the patio or stood in the garden, where the sun crocheted patterns on the lawn, and its rays fell through the beech trees, adding a golden sheen to everything. A few weeks ago, many of those present had been gathered to celebrate Magna’s anniversary—and now they’d returned to make certain that the grand matron at Kongslund was truly gone.

Ole Almind-Enevold stands in the door to the sunroom, talking to Susanne, when suddenly she calls for me: “Marie, come here a minute!”

Ole stares at me arrogantly, as is his habit. He has never liked me, and perhaps he thinks I know something important about the recent assaults on Kongslund.

“Ole is asking about a diary that he believes Magna kept
…
” Susanne Ingemann says, studying me with a peculiar look in her eyes. I don’t think she wants me to answer. But she is also scared of the powerful man.

“A diary?” I sway on my deformed legs. With dry eyes, I imagine Magna’s grave. She didn’t take it with her. That much I know.

Susanne nods. “Yes. A diary with lists of the children in the home—it may go back all the way to 1936.”

“The records are in the office,” I say, looking up from the darkness. But not at Ole.

“She might have called it the Protocol or her Log Book. It was about the size of an encyclopedia and bound in green leather.”

I shrug and look squarely at Susanne. “Magna didn’t confide that kind of thing to me.”